Alan N. Shapiro
media theory,
science fiction theory,
future design research
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The Identity and Anxiety of Colonial Dublin in Joyce’s Dubliners, by James Shapiro
“Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears…” This line from ‘The Sisters,’ the first story in James Joyce’s Dubliners, establishes from the outset a central theme of the collection.
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Morality in Europe Today
“Morality in Europe today,” wrote Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil, “is herd animal morality.” On April 22, 2010, there took place an extraordinary creative event in Dusseldorf, Germany – at the KIT (Kunst im Tunnel) art space – called “Morality in Europe Today” (Zeitgenössische Moralvorstellung in Europe).
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Questioning Steven Hawking’s Scientific Discourse, by Marc Silver and Simon Schaffer
Most of this text is an interview-conversation between Professor Marc Silver of the University of Modena and Professor Simon Schaffer of Cambridge University that took place in Cambridge, UK in November 1995. It was originally published in Marc Silver’s book Arguing the Case: Language and Play in Argumentation.
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Claude Lefort, Political Philosopher, by Alan N. Shapiro
Politics as it is practiced in America is obsolete. It is a simulation of democracy. It seems to have very little to do with democracy any more. How do we get back to (or, more accurately, move forward to) being a real democracy? Here’s my answer: By understanding the lifework of Claude Lefort.
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Today is a Sacred Day
As a New York Jets fans, today is a sacred day. An inspiring day in my life was January 12, 1969. Super Bowl III. I was 12 years old. My brother and I watched the game on a small black-and-white TV. We saw the Jets, who were 19 point underdogs, beat the mighty Baltimore Colts.
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Conference on Quantum Culture in Venice
After the conference on Digital Culture in Milan, I arrived in Venice. I took the Vaporetto number 2 towards my hotel. I meditated about how I have had enough of conferences about Digital Culture. During this Vaporetto ride, the answer dawns on me: we need to develop the paradigm of Quantum Culture.
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Learning to Love Androids: The Wondrous World of the Universal Scholar Alan Shapiro, by Florian Fricke
Learning to Love Androids: The Wondrous World of the Universal Scholar Alan N. Shapiro by Florian Fricke translated from the German by Lenny “Nails” Dykstra Bayerischer Rundfunk Radio, ZÜNDFUNK Broadcast: June 13, 2010, 22:05 – 23:00 The American Alan N. Shapiro is a technologist and futurist, on the basis of philosophy and sociology.
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Baudrillard, Globalization and Terrorism, by Douglas Kellner
Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks and subsequent Terror War, Jean Baudrillard has written a series of reflections on the contemporary moment that have evoked the excitement and controversy of his earlier work. For many years, Baudrillard had complained that the contemporary era has been one of “weak events.”
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Baudrillard und Trek-nologie, von Alan N. Shapiro
Beginnen wir mit dem Ende der sechziger Jahre in New York, dem Ort meiner Kindheit. Als guter Jude sollte ich eine jüdische Erziehung bekommen. Stattdessen liebte ich Star Trek. Alles, was ich weiß, habe ich von Star Trek gelernt. Unter anderem auch, die Naturwissenschaften zu lieben. Das machte mich zu einem guten Amerikaner.
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Star Trek: How the New Comes into the World
Most scientists, academics, and journalists who write about Star Trek claim to be fans and lovers of the various Starfleet Captains and their crews. But their customary methodologies function to deny to Star Trek its true originality as the creator of a reality-shaping “science fiction” that formatively influences culture, ideas, technologies, and even “hard sciences.”
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Star Trek: 20 Basic Principles
Star Trek Basic Principle #1: Radical Uncertainty Captain’s Log, Supplemental: “We are seeing things that cannot possibly exist, yet they are undeniably real.” In its indeterminacy and paradox, the object discovers us. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle holds that the degrees of my knowing the position and speed of quantum particles are inversely proportional to each other.
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Beaubourg, Quai Branly, and the Simulacrum of Jean Baudrillard, by René Capovin
Although I am not a big Quentin Tarantino fan, I absolutely loved Inglourious Basterds. One of the things that I loved about it is that four languages – French, English, German, and Italian – all play important roles in the film. So now for some quadrophonic Baudrillard.
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Die Bibliothek der Zukunft – The Library of the Future, von/by Alan N. Shapiro
Presented at the Wikipedia Critical Point of View Conference in Leipzig, Germany, Sept. 26, 2010 Die Bibliothek der Zukunft – The Library of the Future in German and English At this conference, I was on a panel together with Sabria David. Sabria is an expert in value-oriented business communication and corporate brand development.
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My Hometown is Roslyn, Long Island, New York
In 1980, I sat inside my hometown library in the “haute bourgeoise” town of Roslyn and read all the books they had about the student-worker near-revolution in May-June 1968 in France: books like Alain Touraine’s The Movement of May and Alfred Willener’s The Action-Image of Society.
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Baudrillard and Trek-nology (Or Everything I Know I Learned From Watching Star Trek and Reading Jean Baudrillard), by Alan N. Shapiro
We should be greatly mistaken were we to view science fiction as an escape from everyday reality: on the contrary, it is an extrapolation from the irrational tendencies of that reality through the free exercise of narrative invention.
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